1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid ejection apparatus that ejects a liquid onto a medium, and in particular, to a liquid ejection apparatus with a mechanism that collects mist.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an ink jet printing apparatus, a print head ejects ink for printing. At this time, fine droplets referred to as ink mist generate as a result of ejection of ink droplets forming an image. After ejected from the print head, the ink mist, due to the light weight thereof, floats inside the printing apparatus without landing on a print medium. Furthermore, the ink mist is likely to be affected by surrounding air currents. Thus, the ink mist may fly around inside the ink jet printing apparatus and adhere to various places. In particular, when a large amount of ink mist adheres to a surface of the print head, droplets of the ink mist may merge together into large ink droplets. Then, the merged ink droplets may affect ejected ink droplets around ejection ports, degrading the quality of the image.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-297801 discloses an ink jet printing apparatus provided with an electrode plate that allows a print medium to generate charge in order to allow the print medium to attract the ink mist.
However, the ink jet printing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-297801 is configured to allow the print medium to attract the ink mist simply by applying power to electrodes to collect the ink mist, and thus the surface of the print medium needs to be set to a high potential. Thus, not only the ink mist but also main droplets for printing may land on the print medium at incorrect positions by effect of static electricity. This may degrade the quality of the print image.